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Dell Venue 8 Pro review

Dell's Venue 8 Pro is an 8-inch Windows 8 tablet that's available either standalone or with some handy accessories including a Bluetooth keyboard, cover/stand and a stylus. So is it better than the other Windows tabs we've seen?

It's on sale now for £249.

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Design

The Venue 8 Pro looks unremarkable with its functional all-black livery but it feels solidly built and is easy to hold with its textured rubberised plastic backing. At 9mm it's surprisingly slim for a Windows tablet too.

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Weirdly, the usual large Windows start button that normally sits proudly beneath the screen of most Windows 8 tablets isn't here -- we eventually realised it's a hard button on the side. Presumably this is Dell's way of doing something different, but it's a pointless move that only confuses.

Dell Venue 8 Pro

Dell

The 8-inch display offer a resolution of 1,280x800 pixels, which boils down to 189ppi. This less than full HD resolution may not match the very best but it's fairly standard at this price and provides a decent compromise of sharpness, brightness and colour balance. It supports ten-point touch, which gives it one up on the five-point Lenovo Miix 2 for instance.

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Processor and Windows

The quad-core 1.8GHz Intel Atom Z3740D processor back by 2GB of RAM does a pretty good job of keeping the various balls in the air, and is a little more powerful than rivals like the Miix 2 or the Toshiba Encore. It delivered a PC Mark benchmark score of 2,058, which means it's not in the same league as the Microsoft Surface Pro 2 or even the Nokia 2520 but it'll do okay for most everyday tasks -- watching movies, surfing the web and even playing HD games like

Riptide GP 2.

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Good to see that it's running a full version of Windows 8.1 rather than the increasingly lesser-spotted RT version, which limits you to apps from the Windows store. So you can add virtually any Windows software you like but as with other small-screen tablets, the desktop mode can get a bit cramped at high resolution.

You can pay extra for a Bluetooth keyboard and cover that converts into a stand (another £100) which will make it easier to navigate the OS in desktop mode and the keyboard especially will help you make best use of the full Home and Student edition of Microsoft Office 2013.

Dell Venue 8 Pro test photo

Dave Oliver

Dell Venue 8 Pro test photo

Dave Oliver

Photography

The 5-megapixel camera on the back isn't overly blessed with options, and picture quality is no better than you'd expect, with wayward exposure and not particularly sharp resolution. There's also a 1.2-megapixel camera on the front but neither of these come up well against the Lenovo Miix 2, which manages a better quality 5-megapixel camera and a 2-megapixel camera.

It's reasonably well-endowed with 32GB of storage, plus you can add another 64GB via microSD card in a covered slot on the side.

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The 4,830mAh battery held up pretty well too, delivering a little over eight hours in continuous tests, which should more than see you through a day of general use.

Conclusion

The Dell Venue 8 Pro is a reasonably powerful Windows 8 device for a decent price. However, you'll need to shell out for an additional keyboard to get the most use out of it.